


Nightswimming

by EAWeek



Category: Sports RPF
Genre: 2012 Summer Olympics, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Olympics, Swimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 05:36:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3839053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EAWeek/pseuds/EAWeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the London Olympics, Ryan Lochte is blackmailed with an incriminating video file.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightswimming

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally written in 2012, in response to a prompt at another web site. The prompt was “Midway through the London Olympics, a Phelps-Lochte sex tape surfaces.”

Title: **Nightswimming**

Author: E.A. Week

E-mail: e.a.week at gmail dot com; also on Live Journal as eaweek.

Summary: During the London Olympics, Ryan Lochte is blackmailed with an incriminating video file.

Category: Sports, Olympics, real-person fic, Phelps/Locthe slash.

Feedback: Comments are always welcome! Loved it? Hated it? Leave a review, shoot me an email or a PM, and let me know why!

Story rating: Rated E (explicit; R in movie terms) for language, drug references, and implied sex.

Credit where credit is due: Title stolen from R.E.M.

Note: This story was originally written in 2012, in response to a prompt at another web site.  The prompt was “Midway through the London Olympics, a Phelps-Lochte sex tape surfaces.”

_For months, we wondered what Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps were like when no one was watching, when they weren't on a pool deck doing everything imaginable to crush each other's professional aspirations. And finally, for a brief couple of seconds, they were letting us in._

The message pings into his inbox just as he is about to shut down his laptop for the night.  He would have ignored it—he _should_ have ignored it—but it comes from one of his teammates.  He’s been receiving messages and texts and tweets by the thousand from outside, but far fewer from his teammates—especially not from those he’ll be facing in tomorrow night’s finals.  There is no subject line, and when he opens the message, he finds only a chillingly blank white space.

But there are attachments.  Lots and lots of .jpg files attached.  Ryan opens just one and in that instant, his life flashes before his eyes.  All the years and years of time and training and sacrifice and exhaustion, the bone-grinding, muscle-tearing pain that simply couldn’t be explained to anyone who didn’t swim—and now, when he’s on the precipice of owning the sport—comes _this_.

(ii)

He still remembers the last time he had this exact feeling of gut-churning panic, of skin-crawling horror, the fear that absolutely everything in his world could at any moment come crashing down on him.  It was the morning the bong photo surfaced, luridly splashed across the front pages of seemingly every publication, every web site in the world: the mighty Olympic hero brought low with stunning, ugly speed.  And if it could happen to Michael, it could happen to anyone.  Ryan flashes back to that frantic race through his house, purging his stash and flushing every flake of cannabis down the toilet.  For days afterwards, he’d lived with the unholy terror that the suits from USAS or FINA, or the morality police from WADA would come knocking on his door.  He and Michael were known to be bros, partners in misbehavior, and if Michael was targeted for smoking pot, there was a very good chance Ryan would be as well.  Guilty by association.  Ryan had gathered up every bit of drug paraphernalia that he owned, wiped it all clean of his fingerprints, and had given it all to one of his friends for safekeeping.

He remembers Gregg’s piercing laser glare when he’d said, _You better be clean, buddy_.

 _Dude, no problem_ , Ryan had insisted.  _Chill!_

Gregg had said, _You ever get caught with your nose in a bong, anything turns up in a blood test, you find another coach.  Got it?_

Ryan had just laughed and said, _Jeah!_   But Gregg hadn’t even cracked a smile.

This, though—this was much worse than any drug embarrassment, DUI, indiscretion with a girl, or douchey fratboy prank would ever be.  Flagrant gay sex—this was the sort of thing that still had the power to shock, to titillate, to destroy.

(iii)

The photos are clearly screencaps from a video.  Ryan can tell this because of the way they form a neat sequence.  If printed, the photos could be viewed like an old-fashioned kid’s flip-book, though a kid’s book would obviously not be so X-rated.  The video had been shot from behind, and the taut, muscular buttocks and bulging thighs could belong to almost any elite athlete.  The photo quality is clear, but the upper bodies of the two men are shadowed and indistinct.  The truly damning images are late in the sequence, after Michael and Ryan had fallen asleep.  Michael is sprawled supine, head thrown back, mouth yawning wide as he snores.  The naked glory of his endless torso could belong to no one but him, but the indisputable identifying marks are those goddamned tattoos: the Olympic rings on the right, the blue and yellow “M” on the left.  The media always politely describe the tats as “on his hips;” in vulgar truth they are positioned so that no one can ogle the ink without also getting an eyeful of Michael’s cock.

Ryan had fallen asleep curled half on his side, face turned into Michael’s arm, and even in the dim light that filtered through the dormitory window, the alligator tattoo on his right shoulder can be easily discerned.

With just one click, the photos or video—or both—could go instantaneously viral.  Ryan’s career, his dreams, his ability to pull million-dollar endorsement contracts—all of it would be down the crapper.  He’d be a laughingstock, the butt of relentless cruel jokes for the rest of his life.  Nobody would ever forget this.  There would be no place on Earth he could go to escape the ridicule.

(iv)

_As Lochte was talking about how weird it was going to be that he would never race against Phelps again, Phelps walked into the room. "Hey," Lochte said with a smile. "I was just talking about you."_

The cardinal rule of sex at the Olympics is this: what happens in the Village stays in the Village.  Whether sex is gay, het, bi, multiple, or solo, no matter what manner of kink is involved, silence is the rule.  You never, ever rat out what someone else has done, or who they did it with, or when, or where, or how often.  Don’t ask, don’t tell: the unspoken Olympic creed.

The second rule, a corollary to the first—at least among the swimmers—is that the girls are off-limits until after the competition ends.  Most of the swimmers wait until after the last event to start chasing tail; the prospect of getting some propels them through those hellish last 48 hours of competition.  Ryan is pretty sure that he and Michael aren’t the only swimmers who get off with each other.  He knows people on the outside would never understand this, would never get that a dude could crave pussy and yet still butt-fuck a teammate.  As far as Ryan is concerned, sex with girls and sex with guys are completely different things.  He doesn’t consider himself gay or even bi.  He just likes getting off with Michael.  And Michael can pretty much have anyone he wants.  In spite of his weird teeth, chicks still throw themselves at him, practically begging him to fuck them.  Guys, usually a little more subtly, also let Michael know of their availability.  Since Athens, Michael has come to view the entire Village as his private harem, and Ryan has benefitted handsomely from his role as Michael’s Comedy Sidekick.

And now it looks like they’re both going to be completely and utterly fucked—and not in a good way—because they couldn’t wait a few days to celebrate their victory in the 800 free relay.

(v)

_Then, they shared a moment of being two guys who wanted nothing more than to escape a room filled wall-to-wall with reporters._

Ryan needs to know just one thing.  He needs to know how the everloving fuck Tyler got hold of that goddamned video.

Skin slick with sweat, legs shaking underneath him, he makes a circuit of the room.  As usual, his luggage, clothes, and belongings are strewn from one end of the room to the other.  This annoys Michael, who keeps his shit relentlessly organized (a habit Bob has insisted upon and reinforced over the years), but he never complains to Ryan.

Ryan has used one of the windowsills to stash extraneous stuff he doesn’t use much: extra caps and pairs of goggles, information about the village, maps and guidebooks, and some spare electronics, wires for his laptop, iPod, and phone.  And there, amidst the clutter, sits an innocent-looking webcam, a one-eyed robot that sees everything and sends it back to Tyler’s laptop.  The camera is aimed directly at the bed.

Ryan thinks about how they all laughed about the beds: five feet, eight inches long, covered with those ridiculous quilts, like bunk beds in a Sears catalogue.  The gymnasts and divers would sleep comfortably, but anyone over five-six would need to scrunch up in fetal position to keep from falling off the damn things.  Michael and Ryan had solved the problem by pushing their two beds end-to-end and sleeping together.  In the sickening clarity of hindsight, maybe that hadn’t been such a great idea.

He’s pretty sure he knows when Tyler installed the webcam.  He’d come into the room to congratulate Ryan after the 400 IM, when Ryan had still been jeeped up on adrenaline, buzzing about his victory.  Ryan should have taken better notice of the casual way Tyler made a quick visual inspection of the room.  Ty hadn’t hidden the cam then—no, he’d probably waited until Michael and Ryan were both gone, racing the 400 free relay—they were careless about locking the door.  And later, in their disappointment over their humiliating loss to those French pricks, they hadn’t noticed that anything in the room had changed.

Ryan returns to his laptop, to the email that sits there, glowing, like some obscene radioactive substance.  The blank message screen speaks louder than mere words ever could. Tyler isn’t using this video to extort money from Ryan, or even sexual favors.  No, he doesn’t want anything so predictable.

He wants the fucking race.

(vi)

In the end, it isn’t difficult to let Tyler win.  Ryan is so jelly-legged—as much from fear as from fatigue—that it’s all too easy to let Tyler roar past him like a locomotive in the final twenty meters.  Later, on the medal stand, Ryan is somehow able to keep a neutral expression, even though he could howl like a beast and ram the goddamned gold medal down Tyler’s smug fucking throat.

Then Ryan has the added humiliation of losing the 200 IM to Michael, who is oblivious to this whole fucking nightmare.  Ryan wonders if he’ll ever be able to tell Michael what happened.  Maybe.  Maybe one day, decades from now, when they’re both old and bald and fat, sitting on a beach on some tropical island somewhere, doing bong rips and laughing their asses off over the memories of their competitive days, when they were the ripped young gods who ruled both the pool and the unbridled sexual zoo of the Olympic Village.

Maybe one day.  But not now.

(vii)

_Lochte sat back in his chair and smiled. He pumped his fist and tapped Phelps softly on the back as he climbed out of his chair._

_"Have fun," he said with a wink. "I'm out of here."_

_He then quietly whispered to Phelps that he would text him later._

(viii)

He still couldn’t look at photos of himself from that night, much less watch the video of the races.  He hates the sight of his own face, the eyes full of fear, rimmed in deep rings of purple-black exhaustion.

Better to live with the disappointment of unfulfilled expectations.  He still has two golds, two silvers, and a bronze from these Games, a decent haul by anyone’s standards except his own.  Unlike Michael, he’s still competing.  There will be more chances to win, more opportunities for million-dollar endorsement contracts, more time to be America’s golden boy of the pool.  Part of him would like to retire, to spend the next few years just surfing and eating and smoking dope and getting laid, but that’s not an option: he’s supporting almost his entire family.  There are two younger siblings to finish putting through college, a home in foreclosure, lawyers’ fees from the divorce, credit card debts up the ass.  And they’ve all gotten into the lazy habit of crying to Ryan every time they want some luxury item, or a bill comes in that they can’t pay, and Ryan is too damned soft-hearted to say no to any of them.

Ryan reminds himself of this every time he thinks of the video, and how his life would be utter shit if it was ever made public.

He wonders what, if anything, Tyler will continue to demand, or if he’ll be happy with defeating Ryan in one race on the world’s biggest stage.

(ix)

_On Friday, Lochte will celebrate his 28th birthday with a newfound appreciation for what it means to be Phelps. In the four years since Beijing, he had done everything he could. He flipped tires. He pulled chains. He stopped eating McDonald's. Deep in his core, he believed it was going to be enough. He told everyone and anyone who would listen that this time was his time._

The room is stripped bare, his bags are packed, and outside, busses are ready to take the remaining athletes to the airport.  Ryan glances around, scarcely able to believe this is it: it’s over, London is done and in the past.  Adrenaline is still whipping around his system, but he can feel it beginning to ebb.  By the time he gets home, the inevitable let-down will kick in—the black depression, the long crying jags, the sleepless nights.  He gets like this after every big meet, but it’s especially bad after an Olympics—especially after an Olympics where he didn’t swim nearly as well as he’d expected, as well as everyone had expected of him.

Outside on the sidewalk, bags and suitcases are being loaded into the belly of the bus.  The morning had been sunny, but now clouds are moving in, and Ryan can smell rain in the air.  Not that it matters: he’ll be at Heathrow, and maybe airborne, before the rain starts.

He spots Tyler, joking around with Ricky and Peter.  Ryan catches his eye and approaches the group.  He reaches into the pocket of his jacket.

“Dude,” he says, tossing Tyler the webcam. Tyler catches the thing expertly and stuffs it into his pocket, that shit-eating smile never leaving his face.  Ryan nods at the other guys and boards the bus without looking back.

**~The End~**

**Author's Note:**

> The quotations in italics are from the article, “Lochte-Phelps rivalry comes to end,” published in ESPN Magazine, August 2, 2012 (yes, the article really was THAT shippy), which provided the inspiration for much of this story. This is my only real-person fic, the only thing I’ve ever written in the present tense, and the only thing I’ve written in response to a prompt. It was an interesting experience!


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